Jailed MP's wife fights Mugabe so that suffering is not in
vainBy Peta Thornycroft in Harare(Filed: 05/03/2005)

After losing
her home, suffering a miscarriage and seeing her husband imprisoned in one
of Zimbabwe's fetid jails, Heather Bennett wonders whether she is going
slightly mad.

The question has preyed on her mind ever since she decided
to defy brutal intimidation and stand in her husband's place as an
opposition candidate in the country's general election due on March
31.

"If I didn't stand in his place, what was the point of so much
suffering?" Mrs Bennett, 42, asked.

Her husband, Roy, 48, is the MP
for Chimanimani. Perhaps because he is a white farmer with an enormous
following among his overwhelmingly black electorate, he has become a hate
figure for President Robert Mugabe.

Even by the standards of Zimbabwe's
regime, the Bennett family has faced a ferocious campaign of intimidation,
with Mr Bennett branded a criminal.

His wife will today pay her
fortnightly 30-minute visit to Mutoko jail.

The couple will, as usual,
hide their tears from the guards. Their composure restored, they will talk
quickly about their son, Charles, 19, and daughter, Casey, 16. "Roy doesn't
want to talk about politics now, he only wants to hear news of family,
friends, even the dogs," said Mrs Bennett. "Our daughter cannot cope seeing
her father in prison. She sobs all the way home."

Mr Bennett was
jailed for 12 months with hard labour in October. His crime was to have
pushed over a cabinet minister in response to a tirade of abuse during a
heated debate.

Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party looked forward to recapturing
Chimanimani, once among its safest seats. But after weeks of agonising, Mrs
Bennett decided to stand for the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change.

"It's so unfair, that's what really gets to me. Roy wanted me to
stand because he said too many people had lost too much in the last five
years for us to abandon the seat to Zanu-PF. He said it was up to me to
decide.

"I hoped Roy's campaign manager would stand in his place, but MDC
supporters sent me a message that if Roy couldn't stand, then any other
Bennett would do.

No one expected that Mr Mugabe would respond with
such ferocity when the MDC challenged him. The campaign against Mr Bennett
began immediately after he was chosen to contest Chima-nimani in the 2000
election.

On May 10, 2000, the family's farm was invaded. Mrs Bennett,
five months' pregnant, was alone when mobs loyal to Mr Mugabe stormed their
land.

"They grabbed us and made us dance and chant and sing party songs,
and they beat the workers. They kept on hitting one man with an axe handle
and it was unbearable. I begged them to stop so they pushed a spear against
my neck and forced me down," said Mrs Bennett.

"That night the pain
began. I lost the baby. It was a boy."

This invasion subsided, but over
the next four years the Bennetts recorded 89 attacks on themselves and their
property.

Two of their black workers, Stephen Tonera and Shemmy
Chimbaraa, were murdered. Three women who lived on the farm were raped. Mr
Bennett was arrested in 2002 and tortured for four days by the notorious
Central Intelligence Organisation.

Scores of cows were speared to
death, their cat was burned alive. The farm workers and their families -
about 1,000 people - were kicked out of their homes and forced to live in
nearby caves.

Last October, officials from the agriculture ministry stole
Mr Bennett's coffee harvest and sold it for £67,000.

In late 2002,
the Bennetts left the Charleswood farm, their home for almost 10 years.
Everything they owned was stolen, the farm buildings and equipment
vandalised or looted.

Mrs Bennett learned last week that gangs were
chopping down the coffee plantations.

Today, Mr Bennett tends the
prison's vegetable garden. "It is better than doing nothing. He is thin and
walks in a weary sort of way. He has a beard and his hair is long to protect
him from the sun," said Mrs Bennett.

Tomorrow, she will address her first
MDC rally. She is less fluent than her husband in Zimbabwe's main language,
Shona, and nervous of "disappointing" people. "Roy is so noisy, so full of
life, so funny, people are drawn to him. I am a quiet person."

MUTARE, Zimbabwe -- Activists from Zimbabwe's main opposition party,
the Movement for Democratic Change, were returning from a campaign rally
recently when they stopped at a shopping center in search of some cold
drinks. What they found instead, they said, were about 20 government
soldiers in no mood for the niceties of democracy.

One soldier,
spotting the party's distinctive red-and-white T-shirts, announced, "This is
a no-go area for MDC." According to the activists, who later described the
encounter, the soldier added brusquely, "We've been tolerating you for a
long time. Get into your car as quickly as you can and leave this
place."

Then, as the activists started to pull away in their pickup
truck, the soldiers began hurling stones. One candidate for parliament,
Gabriel Chiwara, 39, stumbled as he tried to climb into the front seat.
Chiwara, an electrician, said the soldiers tackled him to the ground and
kicked him for several minutes with their boots. As he begged for mercy, he
said, the soldiers shouted: "You have to die! You are selling the country to
the whites!"

As Zimbabwe approaches elections March 31, encountering
"no-go areas" and official hostility has become a common experience for
members of the opposition party. Despite promises from President Robert
Mugabe to make certain the polling is "free and fair," opposition candidates
said almost any form of campaigning puts them at risk of arrest, harassment
and beatings.

The Feb. 20 attack at the shopping center, about 50
miles from this northeastern city, was one of several reported since Mugabe,
who is struggling to keep his party's edge in parliament after nearly 25
years of unbroken rule, publicly vowed that the coming elections would be
free of violence.

The account of the attack was based on interviews
with party activists who were present. Because of government threats to jail
foreign correspondents working in Zimbabwe, it was not possible to confirm
the story with officials, but it resembles numerous reports of beatings of
opposition activists compiled by journalists and human rights groups in
recent years.

Mugabe has worked in recent months to convince
international leaders, especially from friendly African governments, that
this vote will be different from those in 2000 and 2002, when elections were
condemned by international groups as unfairly slanted toward the ruling
party. He has instituted several reforms, including the use of translucent
voting boxes and one-day voting.

South African President Thabo Mbeki,
the region's diplomatic leader, has often defended Mugabe. He recently
criticized U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for calling Zimbabwe one
of the world's "outposts of tyranny."

Yet opposition leaders in this
nation of 13 million said almost every form of campaigning either has been
restricted or is dangerous. They also said they have scant access to mass
media because the government controls all radio stations, television
broadcasting and daily newspapers.

Perhaps most important, they said,
voters have become discouraged and frightened by the rough tactics of
Mugabe's party.

It is often not clear whether the attacks have been
orchestrated by Mugabe's party or merely inspired by his vitriolic rhetoric.
Mugabe regularly accuses opponents of being traitors seeking to return
Zimbabwe to the control of Britain, the colonial ruler here until
1980.

"The terrain is very tough, and we think it is getting harsher and
harsher," said Pishai Muchauraya, 31, one of the opposition candidates who
were attacked. His mother, he said, has been denied government food handouts
because of his affiliation.

In recent weeks, opposition party
activists have reportedly been arrested for putting up campaign posters. One
youth leader was arrested for criticizing Mugabe. Party planning meetings
have been raided by police. And entire sections of the country -- mainly the
rural areas where Mugabe's crude calls to patriotism find the greatest
support -- have been deemed too dangerous for campaigning.

Even in
the cities, where opposition support runs strong, candidates cannot hold
rallies, hand out pamphlets or knock on doors without obtaining prior
approval from police, who have wide latitude to approve or deny such
requests. When the police do approve an event, a list of conditions is
issued, including a prohibition on using "language likely to undermine the
authority of the President of Zimbabwe."

Opposition candidates said
that they gather with supporters mostly at night in private homes and that
they rely on volunteers to quietly contact voters who might be interested in
hearing campaign appeals.The election comes at a volatile time for Zimbabwe,
which faces a devastated economy and growing hunger. The ruling party, the
Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, suffered its greatest
public rift in December, leading to the estrangement of several party
officials.

Among those who left was Mugabe's information minister,
Jonathan Moyo, who has since become an independent candidate for parliament.
Moyo has turned his acid tongue on the ruling party, saying Mugabe is
surrounded by "deadwood" who would have lost power years earlier without his
help.

Zimbabweans also are beginning to feel the effects of widespread
hunger. In the vast cornfields that provide their staple food, the plants
appear pale and stunted from drought. The nation's agricultural yield has
not recovered from the disorder caused by Mugabe's five-year-old program of
land reform, in which the acreage of white commercial farmers was seized --
often violently -- by veterans of the nation's independence war and
others.

"The corn is all gone now," said one elderly man in a village
south of here.

Rampant inflation continues as well, despite a decline in
the official inflation rate to 134 percent. Prices for food and other
products are rising far faster than most salaries, while less than half of
adults have steady jobs.

But despite widespread frustration,
Zimbabweans express little optimism that conditions will change after the
elections.

The ruling party altered the election law to allow soldiers
under Mugabe's command to run rural polling stations. The opposition party
charges that lists of registered voters have been rigged to pad totals in
rural areas, where Mugabe's support is stronger, and hold them down in
cities. The millions of Zimbabweans living abroad, who overwhelmingly oppose
Mugabe, have been prohibited from voting.

Even if the opposition
party gains a majority of votes, Mugabe and members of his government may
legally appoint 30 of the 150 seats in parliament, giving him a comfortable
margin if the election goes poorly.

Yet opposition candidates said their
main opponent was not Mugabe, but the apathy and fear created by years of
increasingly authoritarian rule. Many voters, they said, will not risk
crossing the ruling party if attacks on dissidents remain common.

The
Feb. 20 incident, as recounted by opposition activists, was especially
brutal. One victim, Josphat Munhuumwe, 32, said he was inside a shop when he
saw the soldiers attack Chiwara. He ran outside, he said, and they soon
began kicking him brutally. Finally, he said, a man who appeared to be in
command told the soldiers to stop, and they fled into the nearby
woods.

Sokwanele
Press ReleaseSokwanele's response to statements made by President
Mbeki4 March 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

President
Thabo Mbeki said this week that he has every confidence in Zimbabwe’s ability to
hold free and fair elections, and that the country’s new electoral law is the
first to adhere to SADC’s principles and guidelines governing democratic
elections.

As President, not only of
the most powerful nation within the SADC group, but also the nation which chairs
the SADC organ on defence, security and politics, and which for this reason is
to head the observer mission to Zimbabwe, his comments deserve the most serious
attention.

President Mbeki is quoted as
saying:

“I have no reason to think
that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will
militate against the elections being free and fair.”

Asked how this was possible
given that Zimbabwe was already contravening SADC’s new electoral regime, he
said:

“I don’t know what has
happened in Zimbabwe which is a violation of the SADC protocol. As far as I
know, things like an independent electoral commission, access to the public
media, the absence of violence and intimidation … those matters have been
addressed.”

Like other commentators
around the world, we have to say that we are astounded at the President’s
remarks. Indeed dumbfounded. We ask, how can it be that a person of Mbeki’s
stature, with access to all the information at his disposal, can be so woefully
ignorant of the facts ? Leaving aside his intelligence sources which must, if
they are of the caliber we believe them to be, confirm the massive electoral
rigging already taking place – leaving aside all the President’s special sources
of information, the facts are plain for all to see. Those facts, as we and many
other non-partisan reporters and analysts have consistently recorded over a
period of many months, all point to one, and only one conclusion – that ZANU-PF
have seized control of and deployed all the resources of the state, including
the army, police, intelligence services, the civil service, judiciary,
state-controlled media, and the Grain Marketing Board which has a monopoly
control over the supply and distribution of the staple foods, not to mention its
own youth militia – to secure a ZANU-PF victory at whatever cost to the
nation.

The evidence is clear and
indisputable. For example we ourselves have tracked, not all by any means but a
significant number, of serious breaches of the SADC guidelines, week by week,
over an 18 week period in our special “Mauritius Watch” feature. The catalogue
of serious breaches has continued unabated. Specifically we have provided
numerous examples of the violence and intimidation which President Mbeki says
are “matters (that) have been addressed.” Nor has anyone contradicted the
evidence or ever challenged us on the facts reported.

Time and again we have
reported on ZANU-PF’s abuse of its monopoly power over the state media and its
relentless attack upon the independent media. Indeed only this week in our
“Mauritius Watch – No 18” edition we mentioned the story of the closing down of
yet another independent paper, The Weekly Times (after publishing just eight
editions) by the ZANU-PF controlled Media and Information Commission. The
previous week we had reported on the unlawful harassment and severe intimidation
which finally forced three international journalists to flee the country. Robert
Mugabe’s government is therefore in flagrant breach of the SADC standard
requiring “equal opportunity for all political parties to access the state
media” – another matter which President Mbeki states “has been
addressed.”

Other contraventions of the
SADC principles and guidelines too numerous to mention have been reported week
by week. Here we confine ourselves to the specific areas highlighted in the
President’s statement.

Most worrying of all is Mbeki’s claim that the
matter of an independent electoral commission has also “been addressed”. Here we
move from the realm of reported events (which, however well documented, may
always be challenged by someone), to the solid ground of the law and just what
the law says. The question, does Zimbabwe’s electoral legislation comply with
the SADC requirements for “the independence of the Judiciary and impartiality of
the electoral institutions” is surely a matter upon which all but the most
partisan of lawyers are bound to agree – and we would add, do agree. The answer
has to be a resounding “No”. In our own carefully researched 18 page document
entitled “SADC Checklist” we have set down, side by side, the SADC standards and
the Zimbabwean electoral and security legislation, pointing out the clear
discrepancies between the two. To cite but one example, that mentioned by
President Mbeki, how can it possibly be said that Zimbabwe now has an
independent electoral commission when the chairman and members of the supreme
electoral body, the Electoral Supervisory Commission, are all directly appointed
by the President without any input from opposition parties or civic society ?
And when all the members of the Delimitation Commission, the chairman of the
(subservient) Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Registrar-General are
appointed in broadly similar fashion ? Therefore to state that the electoral
bodies in control of the parliamentary election are partisan, is to state an
incontrovertible fact.

We refer readers again to
the SADC Checklist* which is available from our website or on request
from newsletter@sokwanele.com for
easy reference. In view of the way the position is still being misrepresented,
whether intentionally or not, we urge readers to draw the contents of this
document to the attention of as many as possible.

We refer also to Zimbabwe’s
exclusion of the SADC Parliamentary Forum which observed the 2002 presidential
election and had every reason to expect an invitation to observe the forthcoming
parliamentary election. It is indeed surprising that that the deliberate
exclusion of this group of eminent persons has not prompted even the mildest
protest either from President Mbeki or any of the other SADC heads of state.

Which brings us back to
President Mbeki’s incredible statement on Zimbabwe’s compliance with the
electoral standards set by and for the region. Many have concluded quite simply
that the President is determined to whitewash Mugabe’s fraud come what may. Will
you prove them wrong, Mr President ?

*The Zimbabwe Electoral
Legislation: SADC Check List, is available to download from our website along
with other supporting documents. Please note that Sokwanele is in the
process of upgrading its website and mailing facilities. Our full website will
be live to the public early next week, but we have made these key documents
available now. Please contact us if you'd like to receive a copy of the Check
List by email.

---------- ### ----------

About
Sokwanele:

Sokwanele - Zvakwana -
Enough is Enough is a peoples'
movement, embracing supporters of all pro-democratic political parties, civic
organizations and institutions.

Sokwanele - Zvakwana -
Enough is Enough will never aspire to political office.

Sokwanele - Zvakwana -
Enough is Enough is a peoples' force through which democracy will be restored to
the country and protected jealously for future generations to ensure that
Zimbabweans will never be oppressed again.

Sokwanele does
not endorse the editorial policy of any source or website except its own. It
retains full copyright on its own articles, which may be reproduced or
distributed but may not be materially altered in any way. Reproduced articles
must clearly show the source and owner of copyright, together with any other
notices originally contained therein, as well as the original date of
publication. Sokwanele does not accept responsibility for any loss or damage
arising in any way from receipt of this email or use thereof. This document, or
any part thereof, may not be distributed for profit.

THE announcement of Harare City Council's 2005 budget
was on Wednesday postponed to Monday next week following the death of Harare
Metropolitan Resident Minister Cde Witness Mangwende.

Cde Mangwende,
who was declared a national hero, was buried at the National Heroes Acre on
Wednesday.

Some of the commissioners for Harare spent the greater part of
the week attending proceedings of Cde Mangwende's funeral, thus denying them
time to concentrate on the budget presentation.

The presentation of
the budget has previously been deferred owing to a number of reasons, among
them a directive by the Government that the rates, tariffs and supplementary
charges should be reviewed within the inflationary rate.

Deputy
chairperson of the commission running the affairs of Harare City Council,
Cde Tendai Savanhu, said it would have been improper for the city fathers to
convene the budget meeting soon after burying Cde Mangwende.

"We worked
with him very well and we would not have respected his contributions by
rushing to announce the budget on the day of his burial", said Cde
Savanhu.

Town clerk Mr Nomutsa Chideya added that some of the
commissioners had not received the necessary documents making it difficult
to call for the meeting.

This is the fourth time the announcement of
the budget has been deferred.

Mr Chideya said all the paperwork was ready
and the presentation would go ahead as scheduled on Monday.

Council
last week completed consultations with residents on the proposed tariffs,
rates and supplementary charges.

There were fears that delays in
implementing the budget could have prejudiced council of more than $400
billion between January and March.

HIV/Aids awareness posters plastered in hospitals, clinics and
other offices urge men and women to follow the A, B and C of safe sex. For
many Zimbabwean women, however, the options end abruptly at the point of
behaviour change. Using condoms is out for these women, and not necessarily
because they are averse to either the male or female versions.

For a
start, the female condom is not readily available. In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's
second city, the local authority's health department distributes an average
72,000 male condoms a month compared with 81 female condoms. The price
difference is staggering: a pack of three male condoms sells for ZM$100 (two
US cents) while a box of two female condoms costs ZM$7,600, the equivalent
of US$1.43.

In a hyperinflationary environment, ZM$100 cannot buy much.
The cheapest sweets cost ZM$200. You can get a loaf of bread and a packet of
milk out of ZM7,600. The same amount of money will buy you half a kilogramme
of beef.

This means that women have no access to a contraceptive that
they have direct control over. Because of the cost, many women choose not to
use the female condom each time they have sex. It is reserved for "special
occasions". Besides, women who can afford it complain that the female condom
is not user-friendly. According to the findings of a study on female condom
use by the Horizons Project of the Population Council and Population
Services International, "fifty seven percent of women reported some
difficulty with use, such as problems with insertion, discomfort during sex
and excess lubrication".

Married women said they would want to
use the female condom to avoid contracting HIV from promiscuous husbands but
they could not broach the subject with their partners. Said the report:
"While some women, particularly married women, are interested in the female
condom for disease prevention, they are not comfortable discussing this
openly with their partner. Instead, they reported using strategies such as
telling their partner that sex would be more enjoyable than with a male
condom or that sex would be possible during menstruation."

Clearly,
there are issues of pricing and power relations that must be resolved before
Zimbabwean women can stop being vulnerable to HIV/Aids and other sexually
transmitted diseases.

Acknowledgement comes after regime long claimed that it had no
need for foreign agricultural aid.

By Brian Latham in London (Africa
Reports: Zimbabwe Elections No 12, 04-Mar-05)

The ZANU PF government
this month admitted that it faced serious food shortages ahead of the
traditional May harvest, confounding President Robert Mugabe's frequent
boasts of an expected bumper harvest.

A statement carried in the
state-controlled Herald newspaper said that about 1.5 million people would
need emergency supplies of maize corn, the staple diet, in the western and
eastern provinces of Matabeleland and Manicaland.

But the main famine and
weather-monitoring organisation in southern Africa said the situation was
many times worse than indicated by the government mouthpiece. The
Johannesburg-based Famine Early Warning System Network, FEWSNET, said 4.8
million Zimbabweans, nearly half the current population, urgently require
food aid or they could starve.

FEWSNET confirmed that the situation was
particularly serious in rural areas of the drier provinces of Matabeleland,
Masvingo and Manicaland and also in some parts of the lower Zambezi Valley.
But the food situation is also deteriorating in towns, where inflation of
400 per cent is causing food prices to skyrocket against falling real
incomes, FEWSNET said.

For almost two years, the government has claimed
Zimbabwe had sufficient homegrown maize to feed its 11.5 million
people.

Last year, Mugabe told British television, "We are not hungry.
Why foist this food on us? We don't want to be choked. We have enough." His
statement caused fear among donors that millions would possibly go
hungry.

Mugabe's hard-line information minister Jonathan Moyo, sacked
last month, used the state-controlled press to say the country would produce
about 2.4 million tonnes of maize this summer season, more than the
country's normal 1.8 million tonne requirement. The harvest will, in fact,
be less than 850,000 tonnes, according to independent
estimates.

Bulawayo City Council reported in the minutes of its last
meeting that at least ten people, most of them children under five, were
known to have died recently of starvation. Mayor Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube said
many more would perish in the coming months from illnesses induced by lack
of food.

Archbishop Pius Ncube, the outspoken Roman Catholic prelate of
Bulawayo, accused Mugabe of withholding food for electoral purposes,
distributing it only in areas where people could be bribed to vote for the
ruling ZANU PF party. "They want to control the food and politicise it," he
said. "They'd rather kill people for the sake of power."

Many other
critics of the troubled southern African nation say Zimbabwe's food security
has been heavily compromised by politics and propaganda.

On the one hand,
Mugabe cannot accept food aid from the same western governments he accuses
of trying to "recolonise" his country. On the other, ZANU PF must show the
world that its often violent seizure of about 4,000 white-owned farms has,
far from leading to food shortages, led to a food
surplus.

Nevertheless, in January, maize meal [ground maize] again
disappeared from supermarket shelves in towns across the country. The much
promised food surplus had come to nothing and disgruntled shoppers were
forced to buy imported rice or flour at prices they could barely afford.
Thousands of once productive fields throughout the country have turned brown
and are overgrown with weeds.

Paul Themba Nyathi, spokesman for the
main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said, "The
government is already using food as an election weapon. It is telling
communities, 'If you vote against the government, if you vote for the
opposition, you won't get food.'"

The shortage prompted the government to
blame millers, accusing them of stockpiling maize in an effort to force a
price increase.

Zimbabwe's independent press took up the issue for the
first time in January. The weekly Zimbabwe Independent pointed out that the
South African Grain Information Service, Sagis, published weekly statistics
on grain and wheat exports to the region. Zimbabwe was the biggest recipient
of both maize and wheat, some of it imported from as far away as
Argentina.

"If you go to the
government Grain Marketing Board depot in Harare, you'll see queues of
trucks from Zambia and South Africa," Ndoro said. "They're all loaded with
maize and wheat."

Since Zimbabwe's farm invasions began in February 2000
the country has lost its status as the region's breadbasket. From a net
exporter of food, it now imports to feed its increasingly impoverished
millions.

Meanwhile tobacco, the commodity that once drove the country's
economy, has slumped to a meagre output of about 60 million kilogrammes,
down from more than 230 million five years ago.

Once the world's
number two producer of high grade Virginia leaf, Zimbabwe no longer produces
a crop of either quality or weight. ZANU PF's self-styled war veterans have
forced some 1,400 large-scale tobacco growers off their farms. Scores of
farmers and their families stood helplessly by while angry mobs destroyed
homes and pillaged equipment.

As many as a million farm workers and their
families may have been made homeless in a process that saw thousands
tortured, beaten and raped while workers' houses were burned to the ground
by angry mobs of ZANU PF supporters.

The result has been predictable,
economists say. Tobacco, the engine that has driven the economy since the
1960s, has failed. Efforts by the central bank to revive the crop will not
succeed, say ex-farmers. A programme ambitiously called "Vision 160"
unveiled by central bank governor Gideon Gono aimed to increase production
to 160 million kilogrammes of the golden leaf. But coal shortages for curing
and fertiliser shortages are likely to lead to an even smaller crop this
year.

"It's more likely to be closer to 40 million kilogrammes," said
ex-farmer and member of lobby group Justice for Agriculture Bruce Gemmill.
"There are no proper inputs and the new farmers lack the capital to borrow
enough to grow a sizeable crop."

The demise of Zimbabwe's farming
sector has seen white farmers head for the diaspora.

Deprived of
their livelihoods, some have moved into the capital Harare to start new
businesses. Others have been welcomed elsewhere in Africa. Hundreds of
farmers moved to neighbouring Zambia, others to Mozambique, Botswana and
Malawi. Others have gone further still to Nigeria.

Some African leaders
have encouraged Zimbabwe's farmers to move, but, fearful of criticism from
Mugabe, have done so discreetly. In Nigeria, farmers can claim up to 1,000
hectares of fertile land and borrow over one million US dollars at very low
rates to get them started in the country's most populous
nation.

"It's an attractive offer. The markets up there are enormous and
the demand for food huge," said Gemmill.

Brian Latham was a freelance
correspondent for Bloomberg News in Zimbabwe. He recently fled the country
and has for the time being sought refuge in London.

Professor Jonathan Moyo, as President Robert
Mugabe's aggressive and energetic information minister, shaped the raft of
oppressive laws and policies which enabled Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU PF party
to subdue and then crush the growing opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, MDC.

The workaholic Moyo was labelled by critics as "Mugabe's
Goebbels", a reference to Adolf Hitler's infamous propaganda chief, and
likened his hate messages directed at political opponents and
independently-minded journalists to incitement by Hutu militants ahead of
the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

In Machiavellian style, Moyo manoeuvred
the expulsion of foreign correspondents and the intimidation, imprisonment
and torture of independent-minded judges and reporters.

Mugabe liked
Moyo, by far the most hard working minister in a largely inept cabinet. Moyo
was one of his most trusted and powerful lieutenants, an eloquent and rabid
defender of his policies.

In short, Mugabe considered Moyo indispensable
following the shock he received when, in 2000, Zimbabwe's electorate
rejected in a referendum a proposed constitution that would have greatly
increased his power, and then nearly toppled his government in a
parliamentary election.

But on the weekend of March 5-6, in an
extraordinary and unexpected turnaround, Moyo is launching his parliamentary
election campaign as an opponent of Mugabe.

In the biggest split in
ZANU PF since it came to power at independence in 1980, Mugabe has vowed to
destroy his favourite son, whom he has now dubbed "enemy number
one".

The former minister, in turn, has warned his erstwhile mentor that
it was he, Moyo, who had saved ZANU PF from collapse back in 2000. He said
he was not interested in staying aboard Mugabe's "gravy train" and then,
changing metaphors, compared ZANU PF to "a sinking ship that's heading for
ground after its captain has been left alone by his crew".

The
Mugabe-Moyo rift is sprinkling some hot spice on an election campaign whose
outcome is otherwise viewed as a foregone conclusion, since it has already
been rigged by the ruling ZANU PF government.

The spectacular bust up
began last November when Moyo convened a meeting in his home village of
Tsholotsho, 120 kilometres northwest of Bulawayo, to form a ZANU PF group
opposed to Mugabe's decision to make Joyce Mujuru the first female
vice-president of Zimbabwe. The post had become vacant with the death of
Mugabe's long-time aide and ally, Simon Muzenda, at the age of 80.

Moyo
was shocked at the appointment of Mujuru, who bore the nom de guerre
"Spillblood" when she was a guerrilla leader in the Seventies. In the
internal struggle within ZANU PF, Moyo had lent his weight to the powerful
parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa to replace 81-year-old Mugabe when
he either dies or retires.

Moyo, who owed his seat in parliament to
the president's right to directly appoint 30 of the 150 members, was
incensed when he was not made the ZANU PF parliamentary candidate in his
Tsholotsho home, and a woman was nominated instead.

In a spectacular
public fallout of the kind ZANU PF managed to avoid throughout its first 25
years in power, Moyo declared that he would stand as an independent
candidate in Tsholotsho against the sitting MDC member of parliament and the
female ZANU PF candidate.

Mugabe responded by sacking Moyo from the
cabinet and the 50-member politburo of ZANU PF, the party's top
policy-making body.

Moyo lost his grace-and-favour mansion, his official
car, driver and bodyguards. He was also stripped of two farms and a game
lodge that he was given after white farmers were driven from their land in
2000 - an expropriation campaign that he himself launched by engineering the
removal of white judges he alleged were biased in favour of the
farmers.

Mugabe recruited Moyo, who had previously worked for the Ford
Foundation in Nairobi and as a lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg, in late 1999 to spearhead his various parliamentary and
presidential election campaigns.

It was Moyo who drafted media
legislation, including the notorious Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act, AIPPA, which was used to close down newspapers and to arrest
and deport scores of journalists. AIPPA remains the major weapon used by
Mugabe against any significant press independence.

In 2001, Moyo
encouraged hundreds of ZANU PF supporters to parade through the streets of
Harare demanding the closure of the Daily News, the country's only
independent daily and by the far the country's best-selling newspaper of any
kind.

Meanwhile, Moyo himself wrote articles in the government-owned
Herald daily accusing the editor of the Daily News of being "unpatriotic".
On state TV he warned the editor that the title would be silenced, and
within a few hours the printing presses of the Daily News were destroyed by
bombs made from military explosives.

The newspaper limped on, but in
2002 it was silenced for ever when Moyo applied one of the clauses of
AIPPA.

It is unclear what Moyo hopes to achieve by going independent. He
has become a hate figure among the many ZANU PF members who continue to
cling to Mugabe. And he is widely reviled by journalists and members of
opposition parties.

"Moyo was ruthless, and single-handedly changed a
lot of things for ever, though not necessarily for the better," wrote Mavis
Makuni, a columnist on the weekly Financial Gazette, one of only two
independent newspapers left in Zimbabwe. "He defended his action
[resignation] by saying he was doing it on principle. But with a chequered
political history like his, we could be forgiven for asking what exactly his
principles are.

"Moyo now mutters about there being no democracy in the
ruling party and the country. Is this the same Moyo who mercilessly mocked
anyone who questioned government policies by labelling them as sell-outs or
agents of foreign interests?"

What Moyo has perhaps unwittingly
demonstrated is the emerging turmoil inside the apparently monolithic ZANU
PF as the struggle to succeed Mugabe intensifies and ideological and tribal
differences begin to surface.

"At least Moyo has ensured that this poll
will be different from past ones," concluded Makuni. "This time it's not
just a question of going through the motions. There will be fireworks in
Tsholotsho, thanks to our maverick professor."

WASHINGTON --
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed to her South African
counterpart U.S. concerns over the elections in Zimbabwe, the State
Department said Friday.

"We've expressed, I think, our concerns
about some of the developments in Zimbabwe that we think make it difficult
to have a free and fair election," spokesman Richard Boucher
said.

Earlier this week, South African President Thabo Mbeki said the
March 31 election would be fair despite calls from Zimbabwean opposition
leaders that the government of President Robert Mugabe has stifled
democracy.

Rice met with South African Foreign Affairs Minister
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma earlier in the day, but did not take questions from
reporters. Boucher said the two sides also discussed the Israeli-Palestinian
issues, the Millennium Challenge Account and human rights.

South
Africa and other southern African nations are sending observers to the March
31 election in Zimbabwe.

"The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing,
and everyonewho promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order
to carryout his promises, and is already on the road to
perdition"

The Zimbabwe Consulate in Australia said
they Do Not have a Voters Roll, infact they told me to go back to Zimbabwe
and back to the constituency wherewe originally enrolled and Voted in the
last 2002 Elections. so this SameRuling applied even then. I wonder how many
other Zimbabweans like myselfhave actually taken the time to call the
Consulate to enquire about theVoters roll too ?

However, if one was
able to vote they would have to travel to Canberra inPerson to cast their
vote and many of us couldn't afford the trip anywaybecause of travelling
expenses and distances involved - i.e - Brisbane toCanberra alone is 1200 km
and 15 hours non-stop driving or 3.5 hours byplane - further than Harare to
Joburg. Perth and Darwin to Canberra isdouble that by plane and a lot
further by road. New Zealand is even further- no consulate there - all
representation must be made in person inCanberra.

Postal Votes are
not allowed either.

Its probably cheaper for Zimbabweans to fly back to
Zimbabwe to place theirvote and quite honestly I can't see many who would
want to do that knowingtheir vote - although it may stand for their
Constitutional Right - mightnot end up in the ballot box? How can this
Election be fair when even herein Australia and in New Zealand we have our
hands tied with the same twinethat ties those in
Zimbabwe?

Realistically its like a Cat chasing its own
tail.

ZIMBOZ

---------------------------------------------------------------------------THE
JAG TEAM

Forty-six countries in the world are listed
as politically "fragile" by the Department for International Development,
and 23 of them are in sub-Saharan Africa.That accounts for nearly half
the countries of the region. In the last forty years, more wars have been
fought in this corner of the world than anywhere else.

This is the
scale of the crisis of governance in Africa which Tony Blair's Commission on
Africa had to consider.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been in the
grip of a bloody civil war, and Zimbabwe's economy has spectacularly
collapsed in recent years, bringing starvation to a country which was once
one of the continent's agricultural success stories.

One of the
hardest challenges lies in Nigeria (see John Vidal's report below), where
enormous oil wealth has failed to alleviate chronic poverty. Political
instability, endemic corruption and high levels of violence have crippled
Nigeria's economy, leaving one of the biggest - 117 million - and fastest
growing populations in Africa million trapped in poverty.

Large scale
international aid and debt relief are a distant hope for such countries as
long as the international community is sceptical that its money will be well
spent.

But the recommendations of the Commission for Africa, whose report
is due to be published on Friday, take on the task of identifying what may
be the first steps in turning the corner.

Rather than putting the
blame solely on African governments, which has been the common tendency of
some western governments, the commission makes a significant shift in the
other direction.

It moves towards accepting that a share of the
responsibility for the political instability and war on the continent lies
in the developed world, where the money is laundered, huge sums are hidden
in secret bank accounts, and the arms deals are done.

"It's not
enough to say Africans are corrupt, you have to ask who is corrupting them?
It's not enough to say Africans are stealing money, you have to ask who is
banking that money for them?" one of the commission members, Anna Tibaijuka,
said at a press conference last month.

Although the report urges African
countries to develop more transparent public financial management and
African civil society to play a big role in holding their governments to
account, it also makes a series of concrete proposals for the developed
world to clean up its own act.

It particularly recognises the
relationship between plentiful natural resources, such as oil and diamonds,
and how, historically, their presence in Africa has facilitated wars while
much of the wealth they generate has ended up in western bank
accounts.

It picks out the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
(EITI) and urges more financial and political support for this
self-regulation scheme for transparency in payments to governments by
corporations operating in African countries with resources.

It wants
the EITI, which was set up by Britain in 2002, to be extended to resources
such as timber and fishing.

In one of its toughest passages, the report
calls on all G8 countries to repatriate illicitly acquired funds and assets
held in their countries and dependent territories, to make "specific
commitments in 2005", and to report back on "concrete progress, including
sums repatriated, in 2006".

Export credit agencies, the government
departments that underwrite companies exporting to unstable countries -
another popular target of development campaigners, are also criticised.
Notoriously secretive, these agencies are urged to be more transparent in
their dealings.

It calls for international negotiations on an arms trade
treaty no later than 2006, and urges the international community to adopt
more effective and legally binding agreements on arms brokering, its
monitoring, and the enforcement of rules.

The commission's report
reflects a hope that a new generation of leaders in countries such as South
Africa, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda can prove a crucial
alliance to lever an improvement throughout the continent.

Africa Unity Square Park in Harare
city centre is one of the most beautiful open spaces in Zimbabwe's capital.
It is a renowned tourist attraction, particularly in spring, when the
colourful jacaranda trees are in full bloom. Meikles Hotel, once voted the
best in Africa, overlooks this recreational area that boasts all kinds of
trees and flowers.

In recent times, however, the park has become a haven
for the destitute, particularly young women. They have taken advantage of
the thickets in the park, where they deliver babies-sometimes in broad
daylight.

Sheila Sakala, 22, has lived on Harare streets ever since she
was 12. She has two children, one aged four and the other barely one. "When
I developed labour pains, my friends and I called the emergency service but,
as soon as the ambulance crew realised I was a person of no fixed abode,
they slammed the phone in our ears," she says, clutching her baby to her
chest.

Three hours later, Sakala delivered her baby near a bench in the
park with the help of Alice Danisi and Gogo Chitima, who are also homeless.
Says Danisi: "I have never delivered a baby, but I found myself playing
midwife with the assistance of Gogo Chitima, an elderly destitute who has
assisted with childbirth on the streets. Chitima bought a razor blade,
surgical spirit and twine that we used to tie the umbilical cord. The cries
of the newborn attracted some clergymen at the Anglican Cathedral that lies
across the park, who called an ambulance that eventually came after they had
assured them of the fees."

Mother and baby were ferried to a council
clinic in Mbare in Western Harare, where Sakala was insulted by the nursing
staff. "They all asked me why I had fallen pregnant and also why I did not
have clothes for the newborn. I did not have answers to those questions,"
she says.

Contraceptives are the last thing that street people think of,
their first instinct being survival - and that means searching for food at
all costs. "It is even tougher for much younger girls, who are driven into
sex with older boys for food. The older boys also offer some form of
protection," says Danisi, who also has two children with different fathers.
"But pregnancy is the result."

Sexually transmitted infections are
rampant among women and girls living in the streets. An average 150 aged
between nine and 16 are treated every month, according to Masimba Mwazha,
who offers free medical services to street people. This has been one of the
biggest drawbacks in the fight against HIV/Aids..

Recently, five
teenagers raped a woman walking home from college at around 7pm after
dragging her into one of the dark alleys along Julius Nyerere Way in the
city centre. Three of them later tested HIV-positive. Danisi adds: "Abuse is
rife and no girl can light a night on the street without being sexually
abused either by the older street kids or regular men who take them to their
apartments. We are aware of the dangers of unprotected sex, but that is
something that comes as an afterthought."

Most of them are lured by
offers of money and food, and many do not know who fathered their children.
Getting them off the streets is not a long-term option since the children
inevitably return almost immediately, according to Health and Child Welfare
Minister David Parirenyatwa. A clean-up operation early this year following
the gang rape ended up being a waste of time as the people were back on the
streets within no time.

"What we need is a proper budget that will deal
with the problem," said Parirenyatwa. "This problem involves many
stakeholders and needs to be addressed in a wholesome manner in order for us
to effectively get rid of the menace. It is a matter of great concern.what
we need is a stakeholders' meeting that will come up with a comprehensive
approach."

Many children on the streets are there due to
circumstances beyond their control, says Naira Khan, director of the Child
Law Foundation, and they need help. Sakala is Zambian and went to the
streets when her mother died when she was just 10. Danisi fled from a
stepmother who was driving her into prostitution. Their backgrounds may be
different, but they have several things in common-neglect, desperation, lost
hope and shattered dreams. No one wants to take responsibility for them and
many have grown to accept life simply as a matter of survival of the fittest
or most brutal.

According to Busie Bhebhe of the Child Protection Society
in Zimbabwe, children comprise 5.8 million of the population of 12 million.
About 5,000 live in institutions and 12,000 are out in the streets. Zimbabwe
has adequate policies for child protection, she says, but the greatest
challenge is implementation. "There is need for money to support policies
and legislation for many services, including health, justice delivery,
psychological support, food security, establishing a child welfare council,
reintegration of street children and training of teachers on child rights,"
she says.

The ruling Zanu-PF in
Zimbabwe has set its sights on achieving a two-thirds majority in the
parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on March 31. The party's
secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, told the Mail & Guardian
that "judging by the situation on the ground and the turnout at our rallies,
the opposition presence in Parliament will be cut to 15 seats".

The
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has, however, hit back with claims that
it will turn the tables on Zanu-PF in its traditional rural strongholds,
particularly in the Midlands and Masvingo provinces, where MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai has been leading its campaign. MDC secretary Welshman Ncube
claims they have been "drawing crowds of between 4 000 to 6 000 at rallies
in rural districts". The MDC is confident it will secure "no less than 70
seats" out of the 120 constituencies being contested.

"It's an
unpredictable election," said Professor Henry Dzinotyiwei of the University
of Zimbabwe. "A lot will depend on whether people will be enthusiastic to go
and vote. Voter apathy in rural districts will work in the opposition's
favour, apathy in urban areas will benefit the ruling party."

Both
Zanu-PF and the MDC recorded more than 10 000 people at their manifesto
launch rallies, held a week apart. President Robert Mugabe took a break from
the campaign trail this week to celebrate his 81st birthday in Marondera,
60km east of Harare. He has spent the past few weeks criss-crossing the
country addressing public meetings and donating computers to schools to woo
votes in the provinces whose chairpersons were suspended after the
controversial Tsholotsho gathering. MDC spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi
accused Zanu-PF of trying to buy votes by "donating computers when schools
hardly had any textbooks and roofing material".

Tsvangirai will be
venturing into Mugabe's home province of Mashonaland West at the
weekend.

Axed former minister of information, Jonathan Moyo is gearing up
for a rally on Saturday in Tsholotsho - where he will stand as an
independent. Moyo, who was given his marching orders by Zanu-PF for
registering to contest the seat, currently held by the MDC, is defiant of
the ruling party's decision to reserve the constituency for a
woman.

On Wednesday, Mugabe laid into his erstwhile spin doctor: "The
real Tsholotsho does not belong to this man."

Speaking at the funeral
of a former minister and Harare provincial governor Witness Mangwende, he
said: "The chiefs there don't even know him. When we asked the chiefs, they
said we do not know this man. You are the ones who brought him to us saying
he will represent the party."

Moyo, revered by friends and reviled by
enemies with almost equal intensity, was the man who reinvigorated Zanu-PF
during the 2 000 election campaign with his sabre-rattling speeches and his
heavy-handedness with the media and any other public critic of the
government. After his dismissal from the party, he declared that he had
saved Zanu-PF from collapse. "I did not join a Zanu-PF gravy train, but
jumped from a sinking ship that's heading for ground after its captain had
been left alone by his crew."

Zanu-PF's Didymus Mutasa, while
acknowledging that Moyo had helped ensure the party's survival, dismissed
suggestions that his departure would hamper its election campaign. "Moyo had
lots of energy, ran around and worked very hard for the party, but no one is
indispensable."

University of Zimbabwe political analyst Eldred
Masunungure is of the view that Zanu-PF and the government would be the
poorer without Moyo, but noted that his own political prospects were "very
bleak" outside the ruling party. He said Zimbabwe was rapidly "evolving into
an entrenched two-party system with little or no room for independent
politicians". Masunungure said it is a "clear exaggeration to say he [Moyo]
saved Zanu-PF from collapse".

When Moyo was a Zanu-PF campaign manager in
2000, the party was struggling to deal with a deepening political and
economic crisis after it had been shaken to its foundations by a shock
electoral defeat in a constitutional referendum in February
2000.

Facing a grim future after the emergence of the opposition MDC in
September 1999, Zanu-PF urgently needed rejuvenation and Moyo, a rabid
critic of Mugabe in the past, stepped up to the plate. His first mission was
to revive Mugabe's failed totalitarian project, of the Eighties, with key
elements including a de facto one-party state, a command economy and a
virtually closed society.

Poll watch

Zimbabwe's former
information minister Jonathan Moyo has taken legal steps to stop his
eviction from a government house. He has been given a two-week
reprieve.

The MDC has been restricted from campaigning among
Zimbabwe's armed forces and denied access to their families.

The
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation gave four minutes of coverage to the MDC
election campaign launch and a two-hour slot to Mugabe to discuss Zanu-PF's
election promises.

Zimbabwean paper, the Weekly Times, was shut down
last week for allegedly violating the country's media laws. The
Bulawayo-based paper had only published eight editions.

The
Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (ZLP), a civil society organisation that claims
to represent 12 000 war veterans, was in South Africa this week as part of a
tour to former liberation fighters in the SADC region. It has distanced
itself from Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF in the election campaign.

A new
coalition of independent candidates emerged to contest the election as a
united front. It has been formed from candidates expelled from the MDC and
Zanu-PF.

The SADC Parliamentary Forum was informed that it will
not be allowed to send an observer mission to monitor the elections. The
mother body is, however, on the approved list, as is the African Union and
the Non-Aligned Movement. The Commonwealth, from which Zimbabwe has
withdrawn, the European Union and the United States, which recently branded
Zimbabwe an "outpost of tyranny" have not cracked an invite. The invitations
were sent out at least fifty days later than prescribed by the SADC protocol
on elections.

Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions' secretary general,
Wellington Chibebe, appeared in court this week on charges of contravening
the Public Order and Security Act in August last year. The case was
withdrawn after the state's key witness, a police officer, crumbled under
cross examination.